NOU Spring Field Days and Annual Meeting, Ft. Robinson, May 18-20, 2018

The NOU Annual Meeting and Spring Field Days, organized by Robin Harding, Jan Johnson and Ruth Stearns, was held at Ft. Robinson State Park in Dawes and Sioux Counties on May 18-20, 2018, with 82 in attendance. Our lodgings and meeting room were in reconstructed buildings of the old Fort. The weather was perfect on Friday and Sunday but perfectly awful on Saturday, with rain all day and a high of 44°F. Finding birds and driving on unpaved roads was challenging on Friday, but the total species list for the meeting is 180. Field trips were led by Kathy DeLara, Bill Flack, Peter Hill, Wayne Mollhoff and Ross Silcock. Among the highlights were the Eastern Screech-Owl and Cassin’s Kingbird found by birders in the campground within the park, a stunning Western Tanager male seen in sunlight among green pine boughs, a surprise Hooded Warbler viewed by many from the road through Gilbert-Baker WMA, and a Sharp-tailed Grouse on the lawn of the Fort. Also found were Cinnamon Teal, White-throated Swift, Virginia Rail, Blacknecked Stilt, Long-billed Curlew, Whimbrel, Red-necked Phalarope, both Whitefaced and Glossy Ibis, Ferruginous Hawk, Golden Eagle, Burrowing Owl, Lewis’s Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker (unusual in the Panhandle), Prairie Falcon, Western Wood-Pewee, Cordilleran Flycatcher, Say’s Phoebe, Plumbeous Vireo, Violet-green Swallow, Pygmy Nuthatch, Rock Wren, Chestnut-collared and McCown’s Longspur, Brewer’s Sparrow, Mountain Bluebird, Veery, and Bullock’s Oriole